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Phoenix Lights: Two Phenomena, Two Explanations, One Much-Disputed Evening

12 min read

On the evening of March 13, 1997, thousands of Arizonans saw strange lights in the sky: first a huge, V-shaped formation, then, two hours later, a row of motionless, hovering balls of light over Phoenix. The case became one of the most widely seen UFO phenomena in America, complete with a governor's prank and a confession a decade later. The key to the explanation is that two separate events took place, and the same military exercise was probably behind both.

When: March 13, 1997
Where: Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Witnesses: Residents of several Arizona cities, including the Ley family, amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley and former governor Fife Symington.
Official position: According to the Maryland Air National Guard, the row of lights seen around 10 p.m. was flares dropped from A-10 aircraft. There is no official statement about the earlier, V-shaped formation.

An evening when everyone was watching the sky

In March 1997, Arizona residents were already looking up at the evening sky often. Comet Hale–Bopp was at its finest: it was days away from reaching its peak brightness and was clearly visible to the naked eye. On the evening of Thursday, March 13, however, many noticed something entirely different.

The first reports came in before 8 p.m. from around Henderson, Nevada, then from northern Arizona, from the direction of Paulden and Prescott Valley. Witnesses saw a group of lights arranged in a V shape moving south. Around 8:30 the formation reached Phoenix, where hundreds were already watching.

Locations of the two phenomena. In orange, the route of the V formation around 8 p.m.; in blue, the direction of the 10 p.m. row of lights as seen from Phoenix. Sky Glitch chart

The giant triangle

Many witnesses saw not separate lights but a single huge, dark body with the lights sitting along its edges. According to Patrick Gross's compilation, some witnesses estimated it to be as much as 3 kilometers wide. Many described it as a boomerang or an arrowhead and said the body blocked out the stars behind it. According to Tim Ley and his family, the object passed almost directly over their house, so low that its left edge was only a few blocks away from them.

Not everyone saw a body. Amateur astronomer Mitch Stanley, in Scottsdale, turned a 25-centimeter Dobsonian telescope toward the lights at 60x magnification. In the telescope, each light split into two lamps, “one each on the tips of squarish wings.” Stanley later summed it up: “They were planes. There's no way I could have mistaken that.”

The formation then continued southeast, toward Tucson.

Two hours later: lights over the desert

Around 10 p.m., more lights were seen from the southern and western parts of Phoenix, this time of an entirely different kind. A row of orange-ish balls of light hung almost motionless in the sky above the southwestern horizon for long minutes, then the lights went out one after another.

Many people caught this phenomenon on video. The well-known Phoenix Lights footage still circulating today was almost all taken of this second phenomenon, not of the V formation. This detail is the key to understanding the whole case, and for a long time no one paid attention to it.

The two phenomena are also clearly separated in time. Sky Glitch chart

The mystery becomes national news

For weeks, only the local press covered the case. In June, however, the major national TV networks also aired the amateur videos, and the Phoenix Lights became world-famous overnight. Phoenix City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood demanded an official investigation, and Luke Air Force Base stated that none of its aircraft had flown over the city that evening.

The base's spokesperson was not aware that aircraft from another base had been training with flares. This later made many suspect that the authorities were hiding something.

The governor and the alien

On Thursday, June 19, 1997, Fife Symington, Arizona's Republican governor, called a press conference. He promised that the state would investigate the lights: “We're going to get to the bottom of it.” Then he announced that the culprit was already in custody.

At that point his chief of staff, Jay Heiler, walked into the room in a glittery pink and silver alien costume, with a huge head and enormous eyes. At least two TV stations carried the scene live. Amid the laughter, Symington told reporters only this: “This just goes to show you guys are entirely too serious.”

The prank outraged many at the time, especially those who had seen the lights themselves. On top of that, Symington was in the middle of a federal fraud trial: he held the press conference during the trial's lunch break. He was found guilty on September 4 and resigned the next day. The conviction was overturned in 1999, and in 2001 President Bill Clinton pardoned him.

Ten years later, in March 2007, Symington made a surprising admission. He said that he himself had seen the phenomenon that evening: “It was enormous and inexplicable.” “A lot of people saw it, and I saw it too.” In another interview he said the craft was “bigger than anything that I've ever seen” and “just felt otherworldly.” He added: “I'm a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies.”

He gave two explanations for why he had kept quiet. According to him, the state was “on the brink of hysteria,” and he wanted to ease the tension with the prank. He also said that at the time he didn't need any more trouble. His former chief of staff, Heiler, who had worn the costume, was not surprised: in his view, the former governor had always been an enthusiastic Star Trek fan.

What did the military say?

On July 25, 1997, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard, Capt. Drew Sullins, made a statement. He said that the Guard's A-10 aircraft had been training that evening at the Barry M. Goldwater Range, southwest of Phoenix. The aircraft dropped high-intensity flares from about 4,500 meters (15,000 feet), and on the way home they released the rest as well. According to one pilot, it turned into “one hell of a light show.”

The aircraft were stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Base in Tucson as part of a winter training program called Operation Snowbird. March 13 was the last night of the exercise. In 2007, one of the pilots, Lt. Col. Ed Jones, also confirmed that he had led the formation that dropped the flares, near Gila Bend, roughly 80 kilometers from Phoenix. According to Jones, the remaining nine flares were released much higher than usual, which is why they could be seen from the city.

According to Barwood, this explanation was “too convenient.” She pointed out that the flares do not explain the lights seen around 8 p.m., as much as several hundred kilometers to the north. She was right about that: the flares account only for the second phenomenon.

Weapons loaders of the Maryland Air National Guard load flares onto an A-10C Thunderbolt II (2010, Kandahar). Photo: Tech. Sgt. David Speicher, U.S. Air Force, public domain

The other side

Some of the witnesses still do not accept the explanation. Lynne Kitei, a Phoenix physician who photographed lights herself, made a book and a documentary about the case. In her view, the lights she photographed could not have been flares. Jim Dilettoso, who worked at a local image-analysis firm, claimed that “spectral analysis” of the videos ruled out flares.

Tony Ortega, a reporter for the Phoenix New Times, looked into this in 1998. Together with astronomers and image analysts, he showed that Dilettoso's graphs did not show a spectrum, only pixel brightness, so the method cannot distinguish a flare from anything else. That does not make most witnesses' accounts any less sincere: they really did see something; the dispute is only about what. The second phenomenon came around 10 p.m., and it is the one captured in most of the videos. Southwest of Phoenix, in the direction of the Sierra Estrella, up to nine bright points appeared, hovered for a few minutes, then disappeared. According to the New Times, this was a separate event, yet the media paid it much more attention than the V formation. For weeks mostly the local press wrote about the case, until in June the national TV networks also aired the footage. Phoenix City Councilwoman Frances Emma Barwood demanded an official investigation.

The governor's prank and his later admission

On June 19, 1997, according to the AP, Gov. Fife Symington promised that the state would look into the lights, then announced that the culprit had been taken into custody. His chief of staff, Jay Heiler, then entered the room in a glittery pink and silver alien costume; at least two TV stations carried it live. Symington said only this: “This just goes to show you guys are entirely too serious.” He held the press conference during the lunch break of his federal fraud trial; the conviction was later overturned, and in 2001 President Bill Clinton pardoned him.

In March 2007, according to the AP, Symington said he had seen the phenomenon himself. “I'm a pilot, and I know just about every machine that flies,” the Arizona Daily Star quotes him; in his view, the object was “bigger than anything that I've ever seen,” and it felt “otherworldly.” By his account, he kept quiet because he did not want people to panic, and because of the fraud trial he did not need additional trouble. According to the National Ledger, the state was “on the brink of hysteria” at the time, and he wanted to ease the tension with the prank; the same paper also notes that, according to the governor, the overall situation was nonetheless not a matter of ridicule. Tucson astronomer and retired Air Force pilot James McGaha, by contrast, said that Symington “is not a trained observer,” and that what he feels in his gut does not matter.

What did the military announce?

According to an AP report from July 26, 1997, Capt. Drew Sullins, a spokesman for the Maryland Air National Guard, stated that eight of its A-10 aircraft had been training that evening over the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, some 60 miles southwest of Phoenix. The aircraft dropped high-intensity parachute flares from 15,000 feet (about 4,500 meters) to illuminate the target area, and on the way home, toward Davis-Monthan base in Tucson, they released the rest as well. According to one of the pilots, it turned into “one hell of a light show.”

According to the AP, this explanation does not cover everything: it does not explain the sightings in northwestern Arizona, up to 200 miles away. Barwood called the explanation too convenient and asked the military to re-enact the event so that the witnesses could decide whether that was what they had seen. Some witnesses also dispute it: according to a 1998 Phoenix New Times article, Jim Dilettoso of Village Labs claimed, citing “spectral analysis” of the videos, that the lights could not have been flares; the paper considers this method discredited because, in its view, what Dilettoso claims cannot be done with his tools.

What do we know today?

Most likely, these were two separate phenomena. The military's statement and the timing of events tie the 10 p.m. row of lights to the flares. McGaha identified the V formation as a formation of aircraft, A-10s, and Stanley's telescope observation also supports this, but there is no official statement about it, and this explanation does not fully cover the reports of a huge, solid body. The case therefore remains disputed to this day.

The sober take

The most important lesson of the Phoenix Lights is that two separate phenomena merged into a single big mystery. Two hours passed between the two events, and aircraft from the same military exercise were probably behind both.

The 10 p.m. row of lights: flares. This is the better-proven part. The military acknowledged it back in 1997, and the pilot confirmed it in 2007. An LUU-2 flare burns for 4–5 minutes at about 1.6–1.8 million candelas and descends slowly on a parachute. By Brian Dunning's estimate, from 80 kilometers such a flare appears brighter than even the brightest stars, and if several flares are released one after another, they form a regular row of lights.

The most convincing evidence is in the videos. Image analyst Leonid Rudin and Arizona State University astronomer Paul Scowen independently compared the nighttime footage with daytime images. The lights disappeared exactly at the ridge of the Sierra Estrella range, meaning they were behind the mountains, far from being above the city.

By our own calculation, seen from downtown Phoenix, the highest point of the Sierra Estrella (Hayes Peak, 1,375 m) is about 27 kilometers away, roughly in the same direction as Gila Bend. If the flares were about 80 kilometers away, then behind the mountain they were no longer visible below about 3,600–3,700 meters. The slowly descending flares released from 4,500 meters (15,000 feet) thus first shone above the ridge, then either burned out or “dipped” behind the mountain. Approximate calculation, with Earth's curvature and standard atmospheric refraction. Sky Glitch chart

The 8 p.m. V formation: a formation of aircraft. The evidence for this part is weaker, because there is no official confirmation of it. According to Robert Sheaffer and other skeptical researchers, five A-10s flew in formation from Nellis Air Force Base near Las Vegas back to Tucson. The route (Nevada, Prescott, Phoenix, Tucson) and the timing match the reports. In military formations, aircraft use steady formation lights instead of flashing lights, so from a distance they don't look like an ordinary airliner. The strongest argument is Mitch Stanley's telescope observation: he saw wings and airplanes.

Why did many see a single body? Against a dark sky, the human brain tends to perceive points of light arranged in a regular pattern as a single object, and to see the empty sky between them as a “body.” This is not the witnesses' fault but simply how human vision works. We saw a similar phenomenon at Rendlesham Forest and Tehran as well.

Illustration: the same five lights, two ways. Sky Glitch chart

In summary: the 10 p.m. row of lights was almost certainly a series of flares. The 8 p.m. V formation was, according to the most likely explanation, a formation of aircraft, but only circumstantial evidence supports this. The reports of a huge, solid body flying low cannot be fully explained by it. That is why the case is not completely closed. What is certain, though, is that merging the two phenomena is what made the Phoenix Lights as mysterious as we know it today.